This research is directed, generally, towards learning more about the reading process and specifically, towards learning more about how the congenitally deaf person naturally aaproaches the reading task. By examining a group of congenitally deaf subjects whose native language is American Sign Language, we will ask: 1) whether recoding is a necessary ingredient of their reading, 2) what types of recoding strategies are employed if, indeed, recoding does take place and, 3) by learning what types of strategies the deaf employ, what manipulations of the written text affect their reading performance. Taken together, these studies should provide evidence on what the deaf reader brings to the task of reading an English text and on how what he brings to the task interacts with variables in the text like spelling - "sound" rules and syntax.